Passing is giving

Abstract This paper focuses on the origin of a polyfunctional morpheme ti 42 in Tunxi Hui Chinese, a little-studied Hui Sinitic language with about 140,000 speakers in Tunxi, Anhui Province of China. This versatile morpheme represents a radical syncretism of nine disparate functions, including that between the lexical verb give and the allative, locative, and temporal marking, which is seldom reported in the literature. By first-hand synchronic data and the historical comparative method, we propose that ti 42 originated as a send -type verb * diai6 ‘pass’ in Middle Chinese, which has extended to a general ditransitive verb give in modern Tunxi Hui. During this process, it has developed into two separate grammaticalization clines, one from ‘pass’ to the allative, locative, and temporal markers, and the other from give to recipient, beneficiary, purpose, permissive, and passive markers. The polysemy of ti 42 sheds light on the complex processes of semantic shift from pass to give , and language-internal and contact-induced polygrammaticalization.